The German House

A Note From the Translator

Translating Annette Hess’s The German House presented a range of linguistic, stylistic, and thematic challenges, as the story moves from past to present, between characters representing different ages, backgrounds, sensibilities, and intentions, and from internal thought processes to external actions. Like Eva, I felt a deep sense of responsibility to do justice to this story, to translate faithfully and thoughtfully the testimonies of Auschwitz survivors and the process of this young woman’s coming-of-age and crisis of identity, as she discovers the truth of her family’s past and must question her own role within it. Eva’s painful personal reckoning parallels the slow thawing of widespread reluctance among her fellow Germans to account for the crimes of the Nazi era—crimes of such magnitude that, indeed, they could never have come to pass, had only a tiny sliver of the population been complicit.

The quick pacing of the narrative demanded nimble, colorful language that contributes to the novel’s page-turning quality and reflects the dynamism that characterized the economic boom in post-war West Germany. This energy carries over into the many passages of dialogue, where my task was not only to convey the content of conversation, but to stay true to each character’s distinct voice while maintaining the tone of mid-century speech.

The kinetic world that Hess creates for readers in The German House—from the noisy and rapidly changing cityscape of Frankfurt to the ways her characters love, fight, negotiate, tease, or sing—is counterbalanced by moments of recollection that may be quieter, but are no less powerful. Memory plays a central role in this story. Defendants claim not to remember what happened at Auschwitz, while survivors recall their trauma before a public audience that expects their memories to be flawless. Eva realizes that what she has always accepted as her childhood memories can no longer be trusted. Memories are often fragmented, incomplete, illogical in the way the mind stitches them together, yet they help define who we are. It was critical to reflect this sense of both distance and immediacy in the language of their telling.